Its peo­ple are a com­mu­nity’s great­est as­set

The longer you live and work in a com­mu­nity, the more in­ter­twined you be­come. You get to know the char­ac­ters, the cham­pi­ons, the do­ers, the dream­ers.

You share in the com- mu­nity’s ups and downs, tri­umphs and fail­ures.

You get an in­vi­ta­tion into their lives and the priv­i­lege of telling their sto­ries. Some­times, those sto­ries are memo­rial trib­utes.

Hants County bid farewell to many fine cit­i­zens in 2018, with some losses be­ing felt far and wide. It was a year of coura­geous bat­tles and sud­den deaths that made peo­ple take note of how frag­ile life is.

Vol­un­teer fire­fighter and re­tired Moun­tie Don Dig­nan passed away sud­denly af­ter a brief ill­ness in July. His ded­i­ca­tion to help­ing oth­ers will al­ways be re­mem­bered thanks to a new

memo­rial fire­fight­ing ser­vice award from the Mu­nic­i­pal­ity of West Hants named in his hon­our.

Joey Archibald was an out­spo­ken, dot­ing fa­ther who took to Face­book in July to urge peo­ple to lis­ten to their bod­ies and seek med­i­cal at­ten­tion in­stead of tough­ing it out. Just as he pre­pared to bat­tle a ‘stun­ningly ag­gres­sive’ cancer, he passed away.

Mu­sic teacher Ted Woundy was a stal­wart sup­porter of the

arts scene, al­ways en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to ex­plore their mu­si­cal­ity and push­ing them out of their com­fort zone. When news broke that he passed away sud­denly in Novem­ber, so­cial me­dia lit up with trib­utes to a man who men­tored and in­spired count­less as­pir­ing mu­si­cians.

Telling peo­ple’s life sto­ries is al­ways an hon­our, as is high­light­ing their con­tri­bu­tions to so­ci­ety when they pass on. Th­ese are some of the fea­tures that re­ally stood out to me in 2018.

CON­TRIB­UTED PHOTO

Ted Woundy loved mu­sic — whether it was lis­ten­ing or play­ing — and in­spired count­less lo­cals to pick up an in­stru­ment.